A patient is admitted to your surgical center for a breast biopsy under local anesthesia. The surgeon has previously informed the patient of the procedure, risks, alternatives, desired outcomes, and possible complications. You give the surgery permit form to the patient for her signature. She readily states that she knows about the procedure and has no additional questions; she signs the form with no hesitation. Her husband, who is visiting with her, says he is worried that something may be said during the procedure to alarm his wife. What do you do at this point? Do you alert the surgeon that informed consent has not been obtained? Do you request that the surgeon revisit the patient and reinstruct her about the surgery? Since the patient has already signed the form, is there anything more you should do?
Now consider the ethical issues that such a scenario raises. Which ethical principles is the husband in this example most portraying? Which ethical principles should guide the nurse in working with this patient and family member?
Jimmy Chang, a 20- year- old college student, is admitted to your institution for additional chemotherapy. Jimmy was diagnosed with leukemia 5 years earlier and has had several courses of chemotherapy. He is currently in an acute active phase of the disease, though he had enjoyed a 14- month remission phase prior to this admission. His parents, who accompany him to the hospital, are divided as to the benefits of additional chemotherapy. His mother is adamant that she will sign the informed consent form for this course of therapy, and his father is equally adamant that he will refuse to sign the informed consent form because “Jimmy has suffered enough.”
You are his primary nurse and must assist in somehow resolving this impasse. What do you do about the informed consent form? Who signs and why? Using the MORAL model, decide the best course of action for Jimmy from an ethical perspective rather than a legal perspective. Did you come to the same conclusion using both an ethical and a legal approach?
Robbing the Dead: Is Organ Conscription Ethical?
The topic of organ donation is a pressing concern in numerous nations due to the undeniable advantages of transplantation, which can potentially save the lives of numerous individuals. However, this matter also elicits moral inquiries among a significant portion of the population (Lewis et al., 2020). The policy of organ conscription has generated considerable controversy due to the state’s practice of procuring organs from deceased individuals who did not explicitly decline this procedure during their lifetime. This paper aims to examine the ethical considerations associated with organ conscription policies and propose an alternative approach to enhance the number of organ donations, thereby assessing the fairness and pertinence of the policy.
Consent
According to the organ conscription policy, all dead individuals whose organs were not refused during their lifetimes had their organs transplanted onto patients in need (Zambrano, 2023). However, the family members of the dead individual are not requested and their rejection is not tolerated. Many ethical issues are raised by this strategy, including how it restricts freedom of choice and hurts the sentiments of family members. For example, the argument that everyone has a moral duty to give organs and that because of this, we have the right to harvest organs with or without permission might be used to support the idea of organ conscription. The rationale for believing that organ donation is morally required originates from a comparable explanation for “simple rescues,” or situations in which saving a person’s life requires little to no personal expense, effort, or hardship. In most cases of easy rescue, it is believed that a person has a responsibility to assist someone in a critical situation when they can do so with ease (Etheredge, 2021). Consenting to have one’s organs taken after death is an example of simple rescue since, in the instance of organ donation, one has already passed away and the organs are worthless in a dead body.
When the dead person’s intentions are unclear and no protest has been noted, organ harvesting is considered to be acceptable; the deceased person’s agreement is assumed to have been provided. When there is implied permission, the state does not disregard a person’s preferences, as it arguably ought to (Ahmad et al., 2019). Policies based on assumed permission seem to be intended to respect the notion that consent is necessary for organ donation while still allowing for harvesting in circumstances when a person’s desires are unknown. But if our procurement
Order this paper